Page 85 of Faerie Hunted

Something passed between us in her stare. That mother and daughter bond I’d been desperately hoping for.

I felt it too. My soul knew the truth even if this seemed like a real pinch-me moment.

“If you’re Dae, then—” I started.

Dae held up a hand and hissed out a low string of sound. “No. Come with me.” Her arm darted out and she wrapped her fingers around my elbow to pull me to my feet.

An electric current passed between us.

I slid out of the chair from the force of her touch, with Noren scrambling out of the way just in time to avoid a kick in the snout. The surprise kept me from reacting.

“It’s not safe to talk here,” she whispered, drawing me away.

The rest of my friends followed. Dae looked over her shoulder at them before she caught my nod and the plea on my face not to leave them behind.

The Queen of Faerie didn’t belong in a place like this anyway, and certainly not without a retinue of guards to keep her safe.

My mom held my elbow as she maneuvered us through the slender spaces between rickety tables. She stopped at a small cutout in the right wall leading to the kitchen and rapped her knuckles against the scarred countertop connecting the two.

“Glenwood just completed his training, officially,” she called out to the chef. “I’m taking a break.”

A rotund fae, eyes like slits, poked his head out from above a range. Sweat trailed down his temples. “Fuck, Livvy, you can’t leave that boy alone. He’s nowhere near ready yet.”

“He’s going to be fine,” my mom assured the man.

“If by fine you mean he’ll scare off the customers, take the wrong orders, and forget who he’s served, then absolutely.” The cook barked out a laugh. “He’s absolutely going to be fine.”

“I do enough around this place to warrant a break. If you’re worried about him, Xordon, thenyoucan come out on the floor,” she snapped back to him.

Good naturedly, I noticed.

The two of them clearly had a rapport between them.

But he’d called her Livvy, not her real name.

“Don’t think I won’t!” Xordon retorted.

Dae—Livvy? —led us to the door I’d seen along the back wall. She pressed her free hand against one of the panels, all the while keeping her hold on me, and we followed her up a narrow staircase.

The gloom lifted on the top step.

One entire wall of the small apartment was nothing but windows. The glass here, unlike downstairs, had been polished to a sheen and afforded a spectacular view of the harbor and ocean beyond.

“It’s mine,” Dae said. “So is the restaurant below. I own it.”

It was a single room with no walls dividing the space outside of a right angle and a doorway I guessed led into a bathroom. The kitchen lay to our right, and ahead was a small bed and a smaller loveseat.

Neither of us wanted to break contact first. We didn’t move even as the others spanned out into the apartment.

“Tavi?” she whispered.

“Hi, Mom.”

Oh, god. Saying it out loudto herfinally broke me.

The tears I'd kept in place for so long sprang free and burned trails like acid down my cheeks. I wasn’t alone there. Mom cracked too. We moved for each other in unison and her long arms wrapped me up in a hug I’d been dreaming about since I was small.

This was my mother, and she was hugging me.

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